


Twenty-One

by a_big_apple



Series: The City Holds Together [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, Big Bang Challenge, Break Up, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-10
Updated: 2012-03-10
Packaged: 2018-08-09 02:58:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 15,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7784047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_big_apple/pseuds/a_big_apple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for fmabigbang 2012.  </p><p>In the aftermath of the Promised Day, Roy and Ed have, to their surprise, come together--in the same house, in the same bed, sharing a life neither of them expected. Set between the Promised Day and the "two years later" of chapter 108 and told in twenty-two vignettes inspired by quotations from Adrienne Rich's "Twenty-One Love Poems." Ed and Roy must navigate love, war, babysitting, jealousy and seemingly insurmountable differences to get and keep what they want--or watch their relationship come apart in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1 - July 1915

**Author's Note:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, / sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, / dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, / our animal passion rooted in the city.”_

  
  
It’s hot as hell. Maybe the hottest summer on record, but Falman’s at Briggs, so there’s nobody to ask, and Ed’s too lazy and fucking _hot_ to look it up himself. Al is beside himself with it, though how anybody could miss sweating like a pig from just a walk down the block to the ice cream shop and back is incomprehensible. On the other hand, maybe it’s the ice cream he missed. And swimming, which he does practically half the day (“It’s the perfect low-impact strength training, Ed!”) in the Armstrong mansion pool, which most of the military is using until the gym at Headquarters is finally repaired.  
  
That’s where Havoc’s PT has been moved for the duration of the heat wave, too—which means evenings off for Ed, because Sarah fucking loves the water, so they just bring her along.  
  
Of course the automail makes swimming a real effort in fresh water, so Ed just has all the windows in the house thrown open and as little clothing on as decency will allow (which is just thin, thin boxers—Ed doesn’t give a whole lot of fucks about decency in this weather), napping on the sofa until Roy gets home.  
  
The jangle of keys in the door comes much earlier than expected, and Ed manages to stretch the barest bit to peer around the couch at Roy, who’s got his jacket over one arm and his shirtsleeves rolled up to show his (actually pretty fucking sexy) forearms. He smiles at Ed, flushed from the heat, and toss his boots off.  
  
“Power went down again, so I gave the office an afternoon off.”  
  
“Don’t you mean _Hawkeye_ gave the office an afternoon off?”  
  
“Mm,” was all the answer Ed got in reply, and then “I desperately need a shower. Or a bath. A nice, cool bath.” Roy tosses his jacket over the back of the couch and tugs open the buttons of his shirt one by one. The undershirt beneath is stuck fast to his chest with sweat, and Ed’s eyes catch on the outline of Roy’s nipples under the fabric. Since the Promised Day, the two of them don’t often get a free afternoon like this…but it’s _so damn hot_ ….  
  
“Care to join me?” Roy says, a lazy sort of purr, and strips the undershirt off. Ed eyes the flex and stretch of muscles, the badass scar on his side, the faint trail of hair from his navel down into the waist of his pants.  
  
Well, fuck it. He’s already half hard just watching this show, and his boxers don’t exactly hide it. “Yeah. Sounds good to me.”  
  
Their bathroom window is right above the tub, and faces out to the street; it’s frosted glass, but it’s too hot to have it closed. They’re on the third floor anyway, who’s going to see them in the middle of the afternoon?  
  
That’s Roy’s logic, anyway, but Ed knows that Roy actually likes hearing the thrum of cars and conversation outside, the city noise filtering up into their little haven. There’s something voyeuristic about it, how Roy likes to be naked and listen to the busy city, or maybe the opposite of voyeuristic.  
  
It’s just too hot to even call him on it. Ed pulls his boxers off and tosses them aside, leaning on the cool porcelain of the sink while Roy runs the bathwater. The line of his back and shoulders makes Ed’s mouth water, but the damn cavalry skirt hides his ass, so Ed pushes off the sink and wraps his arms around Roy’s waist to unfasten it. Roy gives a little huff of a laugh and shoves his butt back against Ed’s stomach, which is less sexy and more just dopey. Ed snorts and rips the skirt out from between them, then returns his hands to Roy’s fly, because the bath is filling right up and Roy needs to be naked.  
  
Roy stretches across the tub to brace his hands on the windowsill, making that little humming noise that means he thinks he’s fucking hilarious, and wiggles his now-pantsless ass. That deserves a slap, so Ed provides, and adds a nice grope for good measure, and the flush of Roy’s skin spreads down the back of his neck and his shoulders, and he says “Ed,” really softly, and low.  
  
And that’s just…Roy’s briefs have got to go, and Ed’s mouth takes a nice little tour of the backs of Roy’s legs as he pulls the briefs down. Roy shivers in spite of the temperature, and Ed just has to bite the back of his thigh, because how fucking amazing is it that Roy loves this, wants this, wants _him_?  
  
Roy widens his stance as he steps out of the briefs, an invitation, and Ed licks a stripe up the inside of his thigh, presses a kiss to Roy’s balls.  
  
“God, Ed…” Roy moans, quiet. A driver leans on the horn down in the street, and Ed has to press himself against Roy _immediately_ , so he pushes behind Roy’s knees until they’re braced on the side of the tub.  
  
“You’re too freaking tall,” he mutters against the skin of Roy’s back, but at least with Roy’s knees bent Ed doesn’t have to go up on his toes to rub his cock along the seam of Roy’s ass. “I really wanna bite your neck right now,” Ed says, biting along Roy’s spine instead; Roy shudders and pants.  
  
“Please,” he says, and that’s just the absolute best, for that he gets a hand tight around his cock and another hand on his hip and Ed’s erection sliding slick against his ass.  
  
“Yeah, _yeah_ ,” Ed murmurs into Roy’s skin. Jerks him hard and fast, because Roy’ll throw his back out or something if they take too long in this position, and Roy’s moaning has _got_ to be audible from the street, weaving into the outside noise. The pulse of the city, the pulse of Ed’s blood, of Roy coming hot over his hand, his fucking flesh right hand, and that’s all it takes for Ed.  
  
The world comes back in bits and pieces; Roy climbing into the bath, the odd swirls of semen in the water shifting as he draws Ed in too, back to chest, between his legs. There’s a bird twittering obnoxiously nearby; across the street a couple is arguing about whose turn it is to wash the dishes. The water is still blissfully cool compared to the air, and Ed groans in pleasure when Roy scoops some onto his back.  
  
And then over his arms, and onto his chest, where Roy’s fingers find his nipples and circle them.  
  
Well…they do have all afternoon.


	2. 2 - September 1915

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

“I dreamed you were a poem, _/ I say,_ a poem I wanted to show someone… _/ and I laugh and fall dreaming again / of the desire to show you to everyone I love, / to move openly together / in the pull of gravity, which is not simple…”_  
  
If he’s truly honest with himself, Roy _is_ concerned with public opinion. Grumman has the Fuhrership well in hand, and Roy has always been his favored son—but that doesn’t guarantee him the spot when Grumman retires, not by a long shot.  
  
Roy has always been ambitious, has always had layers of charm on top of more layers of charm. He has always known how to transmute himself to suit the situation, except with Ed.  
  
Somehow Ed sees through all the performance; Roy is the Flame Alchemist, but Ed can burn away all his conceits and deceptions with a touch, a certain look, a twist of his mouth that says Ed hears everything Roy so carefully doesn’t say.  
  
They don’t kiss in public, or really hold hands. They live together, but Al lives there too—and anyway, in the aftermath of the battle, everyone living in the military dorms had to make other arrangements. Breda and Havoc live together, too; Fuery was offered a room in the Armstrong mansion, as were many others. There’s nothing outwardly suspicious about Roy and Ed at all, and Ed has seemed content, or at least resigned, to keeping it that way.  
  
But when Roy dreams them dancing together at the Officers’ Ball, Ed golden and graceful and tucked against Roy’s chest, and then wakes to find Ed really tucked just there, naked and sleep-warm and dappled by the early sunlight slanting through the window….  
  
Well. In that moment, Roy couldn’t care less what anyone knows or thinks or says. His ambitions don’t seem so appealing, if it means denying this, the good kind of ache in his chest when Ed shifts and mumbles “Carrot juice, wh’ th’ fuck” and drools on Roy’s pectoral.  
  
He tucks Ed’s hair behind his ear, then traces that curve, tugs the lobe. Ed snorts and snuffles and cracks one eye open, glaring death, to which Roy just smiles. Heavy-lidded gold slides over to the clock on the wall, then back to Roy, promising worse death than before. Roy smiles wider, he can’t help it, and Ed twists his nipple (very hard, that _hurts_ , dammit, even if it also makes his cock twitch) and digs his nose into Roy’s sternum before going back to sleep.

It’s only been a few months since he was released from the hospital. They’ve never really even talked about what this is that they’re doing; they share a bed, they kiss over morning coffee while Alphonse grins at them like the proverbial cat with canary feathers in its mouth, they have their days and they fall into bed together again.  
  
Roy wouldn’t give it up for anything. The realization stops his breath, because _what if what if what if_ , but it can’t be helped. Roy Mustang is in love, and somewhere in the ether Maes is laughing at him.


	3. 3 – October 1915 - Letters Never Sent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty, / my limbs streaming with a purer joy? / did I lean from any window over the city / listening for the future / as I listen here with nerves tuned for your ring? / And you, you move toward me with the same tempo.”_

  
  
_Dear Ed,_  
  
_This is a day that the two of you have to spend alone, you say. It’s a brother thing. I don’t mind that—I’ve known you two how long now? I’ve seen what you would do for each other, seen how deep that goes._  
  
_But half a week that you spend traveling to Resembool and back will be interminable to me._  
  
_What, you don’t have enough to keep you entertained? you ask, and the sarcastic tone that used to infuriate me is a little fond now, and makes me warm._  
  
_I’ll just miss you, I say._  
  
_Your eyes soften. I’ll call every day, you assure me with ear-tips pinking. It means you’ll miss me too._  
  
_I get work done. Lots of work, and Riza is so pleased, she piles more on. I have lunch in the office like any other day, I laugh at Breda’s jokes, we tease Havoc about Catalina, Ross reheats the exotic Xingese leftovers from her cooking experiment the night before and we all take bites and make a variety of faces. I accept an invitation to a wine tasting one evening later in the week with Fuery and Armstrong, and it feels good to have plans that you wouldn’t want to join in on, anyway. Training your palate for fine wine, I’ve found, is a thankless and hopeless task. The thought of my last attempt makes me chuckle into my afternoon coffee, and I wonder if your train has arrived already, if you and Alphonse and Winry are eating a late lunch and apple pie. I wonder when you’ll call._  
  
_I walk home in the dusk hours, hands in pockets, free as a bird. You aren’t here, but you are somewhere, maybe thinking of me—and when you’re done there, you’ll come home and kiss me. For the moment, I just send you my heart across the miles, and as I unlock the door to our house, I hear the telephone ring._

  
_Dear Roy,_  
  
_I know you’re really a bastard, but it’s pretty good of you to not make a fuss about me and Al doing this alone. Maybe sometime I’ll be ready to have you with me, ready to let you see all the…the crap, the inky-black awful stuff that comes up to the surface at this time of year. You know what I’ve done…and I know what you’ve done, pretty much, so I know why you understand this kind of thing._  
  
_Anyway, I only just left and I’m already thinking of you. It’s weird to be on a train with Al, like always, but instead of cursing your bastardy name, I’m wishing this trip was over already so you and me could just go to bed and pull the covers up over us against the world._  
  
_That’s kinda poetic, huh. Like something you’d say. So I guess saying what I wanna do after we pull those covers up would ruin it, but I’m sure you could imagine, you being a total perv and all. Good thing you’re my perv now._  
  
_I wish I’d told you I love you before I left this morning. Maybe the kiss was enough, maybe you know without me having to say it. I bet you do. You’re smart like that._


	4. 4 - February 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“You know, I think that men love wars…_ _/ And my incurable anger, my unmendable wounds / break open further with tears, I am crying helplessly, / and they still control the world, and you are not in my arms.”_

  
  
“Listen, Winry, there’s not a lot he can do about it. I mean, he’s not the Fuhrer yet,” says Ed over the crackling phone line.  
  
“Well, I still don't see why you and Al are getting roped into this, you’re not even an alchemist anymore!”  
  
“Yeah, but Al is.”  
  
“Al could barely walk six months ago!” she cries, and she knows she’s being a little unreasonable, and she knows Ed knows it, too. Like that mule was never unreasonable in his life.  
  
She can hear him take a slow breath. “Win…Roy has to go. Where Roy goes, I go, and where I go, Al goes.”  
  
Bile rises in her throat; she swallows hard. “So you’re all just following each other blindly into a war zone, how sweet.”  
  
Ed ignores the bite of bitterness in her tone. “Officially, we’re private-contract bodyguards for Grumman. But it’s really not a war zone, it’s a ceasefire negotiation. Nothing we can’t handle. You worry too much, Winry.”  
  
He says it fondly, but she saw the papers yesterday, the photos of bodies on the Amestris/Creta border. “Pendelton Erupts Again!” the headlines read, and “Creta Conflict Continues” and “Protestors Say No More Blood!”  
  
“Did you see the Central Times?” she asks.  
  
“Yeah. That’s exactly why we’re going, Win. To stop stuff like that from happening anymore.”  
  
The front page photo, reaching up to her from the stoop where Jimmy Danberg flings it every day. A child, tossed like a doll, pieces…missing, ground torn up where a mine was hidden, and forgotten.  
  
Winry isn’t squeamish. She sees plenty of people with pieces missing, it’s her job. She sometimes sees dead people, too.  
  
She’s never seen anything so pointless, so stupid, so _wrong_ as that child, that photo.  
  
 _You saved the world_ , she thinks into the phone, _so the killing would stop_ , and apparently says it aloud too, or maybe Ed can just read her mind.  
  
“I did the showy part, Winry. Roy’s trying to do the hard stuff, the cleanup. I want to help him.”  
  
And what can she possibly say to that?  
  
Except all the things she should have voiced when she had the chance.


	5. 5 - September 1915

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“This apartment full of books could crack open / to the thick jaws, the bulging eyes / of monsters, easily: Once open the books, you have to face / the underside of everything you’ve loved— / the rack and pincers held in readiness, the gag / even the best voices have had to mumble through, / the silence burying unwanted children— / women, deviants, witnesses—in desert sand.”_

  
  
Ed is of the opinion that it’s never too early to start a kid on books—he learned to read when he was three, and taught his brother shortly thereafter—but Gracia has assured him that alchemic theory is not the traditional beginning of a child’s learning life. Ed was tempted to counter with “Al and I turned out okay,” but thought better of it and gratefully accepted a selection of Elicia’s hand-me-down books to keep in the house for babysitting days.  
  
They are, for the most part, small and square and made of stiff cardboard; Sarah really likes mouthing the corners, and has even more fun flinging them at Ed. They fucking hurt when they make contact, so he tries his best (which is pretty damn good) to catch them. Of course, that’s the part the kid likes best of all.  
  
But the mouthing and flinging and giggling in delight is only part of the time; often, Sarah will sit very happily in Ed’s lap as he turns the brightly-illustrated pages, and she’s learning to identify all sorts of farm animals, colors, fruits and, oddly enough, types of automail. (That one was a gift from Winry, after Ed complained over the phone about the farm animals.)  
  
There are books with actual stories, as well—simple stories, but Ed likes them a bit better than the constant repetition of “Who Is In the Barn?” Luckily, these are some of Sarah’s favorites too. They read “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” often, and “Sue Likes Blue,” and “Whistle for Willie,” and “Goodnight Moon” when Ed wants her to nap. And the more they read, the more Ed notices: the kids in these books have a dad, or a mom, or both. Sarah doesn’t. She’s too little to know the difference, but it irks him that there are no books that look like her life. Irks him enough that he borrows the stroller from Gracia and walks Sarah downtown to the kids’ bookstore a block over from Elicia’s school.  
  
The ladies there are nice, and they coo over Sarah, but they’re stumped when he asks what books to read to a baby who lives with her uncle and her uncle’s best friend. Actually, they look at him a little askance after that, though they’re happy enough to ring up his pile of books with no grown-ups in them at all.  
  
“They were probably making some incorrect assumptions,” Roy points out to him later. “Two male best friends living together and raising a child.”  
  
Oh. Oh, _eww_ , not a mental image he ever needed, but that does explain the looks. But… “What’s so terrible about that, anyway? How come there aren’t any…you know.”  
  
Roy’s smile is painfully bemused, and Ed punches him on the arm. “No _gay_ parents, okay? How come there aren’t any books with gay parents?”  
  
A hand over his heart, Roy pulls a shocked face. “Edward! You said the g-word!”  
  
“Shut up, you bastard!” And the evening devolves into wrestling, and then _naked_ wrestling, and a little bit of spanking after that, and Ed never gets his answer.  
  
***  
  
Sometimes when Ed needs a break from reading and research and puttering around the house, he stops by the office with lunch for the both of them. This is always a high point in Roy’s day, an unpredictable joy. Today is no different, though the timing could be better; they take their sandwiches (from the deli around the corner, an office favorite) to the conference room where Roy’s afternoon meeting will be, and Ed is still perched on the corner of the table, gesticulating wildly with his food, when the Ishvalan Ambassador and military liaison walk in.  
  
“…don’t see why,” Ed is ranting with his back to the newcomers, “there can’t be books about alternative families! It’s ludicrous! Like greeting cards, there are greeting cards for uncles and shit, though I guess not uncles-who-raised-card-givers-like-fathers so much, or the uncles’ best friends, now that I think about it, it’s a whole conspiracy against atypical family constructs, you’ve got to do something about it, Roy!”  
  
Ed stares accusingly at him as he clears his throat, and gestures to the doorway. “As airtight as your conspiracy argument is, I have some other pressing business to attend to this afternoon.”  
  
In a flash Ed’s off the table, the tips of his ears flushing red. “Major Miles!” he greets, deliberately casual in that same way cats are when they’ve made fools of themselves and want to pretend it didn’t happen. Then Ed’s expression tightens just a fraction. “Sca—” he starts to say, until Roy steps hard on his flesh foot and he cuts the word off with a grimace. “Ambassador,” he murmurs instead, low and sharp, and gives a tiny nod.  
  
Miles looks unfazed by the tension, as always, and he salutes crisply in Roy’s direction. “Brigadier General Mustang, Major Elric. You both appear to be holding up well.”  
  
“As well as can be, with all the chaos still going on,” Roy agrees, standing and offering his hand. “Ambassador, welcome.”  
  
Roy can feel the electric tension of Edward behind him when the Ambassador takes his hand; for Ed, this man’s touch means disaster. But the Ishvalan holds Roy’s gaze with calm surety. His eyes have changed; they’re not as hard as they once were, though the perpetual scowl remains.  
  
“ _Neskaleh_ ,” he says, which is luckily the only Ishvalan word Roy has learned thus far. Then he nods to Ed. “ _Neskal_ , Edward Elric.”  
  
Unlike Roy, Ed mastered the nuances of Ishvalan greetings after a week of listening to Roy repeating them to himself in his easy chair, so whatever the difference is in these variations, it makes the crackling air around Ed ease a little. When Roy turns to look at him, there’s still that battle-readiness in the line of his limbs, but it’s the same sort that’s always there. Then he tugs his watch (the one Roy has so far agreed to look the other way about, because really he’s just got better things to do than fill out all the paperwork of an honorable discharge from the State Alchemist program) out of his pocket and glances at it. “I gotta head out, time to get Sarah from Gracia’s.” Ed snaps the watch shut and tucks it back in his pocket, giving Roy a look that says “watch your damn bastard back,” the Ambassador a look that says “don’t touch a hair on his fucking head I’ve got my eye on you,” and Miles an amiable nod.  
  
“See you at home, Roy,” he says from the doorway, and he’s out in the hall already when the Ambassador calls out, without turning,  
  
“ _Shimseh_.”  
  
Ed pauses, hands in pockets, head cocked. “Don’t know that word,” he says after a moment.  
  
“The Ishvalan word for uncles who raise card givers like fathers. And their best friends,” is the reply, and Roy raises an eyebrow at Miles.  
  
“A surrogate parent, I believe,” the Major clarifies. “Literally a ‘heart parent.’”  
  
Ed turns to look over his shoulder, absorbing the word and nodding a little as he processes it. The Ambassador hasn’t moved a muscle, except maybe one or two in his face that make his scowl less severe. “We now have a press and bindery in the city center. There may be a book or two that would suit your needs. When we return to Ishval I will send them along to General Mustang.”  
  
Ed’s eyebrows climb into his hair and then settle again, the corner of his mouth twitching up into what might, possibly, be considered the tiniest hint of a smile. “Thanks,” he says, and disappears down the hall.  
  
***  
  
Weeks later, a package wrapped in brown paper arrives on Roy’s desk; when Ed wanders in for lunch, he opens it to find a stack of children’s books in graceful Ishvalan script. Even Ed doesn’t quite read it fluently yet, though Roy’s sure it’s only a matter of days, but the illustrations are clear enough—children, families, drawing water at a well and walking along a dirt road together and praying to Ishvala and taking meals in each other’s company. Families of all stripes, even some who might be uncles. Even some, Roy notes with a combination of pleasure and anxiety at being so clearly seen, who are probably gay.

“Well. This is a side of Ishvalan culture I wasn’t aware of,” Roy murmurs.  
  
Ed just grins, paging through, then holds up the stack. “Yo, Breda! I’m gonna teach your kid Ishvalan, that okay?”  
  
Heymans looks up from his desk full of intelligence reports like he’s coming up for air, and blinks at Ed and Roy and the stack of books. He glances over at Jean, who shrugs, then back to the stack with a considering look. “Sure,” he says finally. “Long as you teach me too.”  
  
Roy sighs. Breda has never been anything but shrewd and deceptively smart; no doubt he’ll be another to master the language before Roy has managed to learn to ask for a bathroom. But Ed looks pleased as punch—and in the end, that’s really all Roy needs to know.


	6. 6 - March 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!
> 
> Little warning for this chapter, there's some battlefield imagery and injury.

_“Your small hands, precisely equal to my own— / only the thumb is larger, longer—in these hands / I could trust the world, or in many hands like these, […] such hands might carry out an unavoidable violence / with such restraint, with such a grasp / of the range and limits of violence / that violence ever after would be obsolete.”_

  
  
Alphonse is quite certain of himself until, five and a half weeks in, the negotiations suddenly sour. He’d ask Roy to explain it, but the General looks so deeply weary when he comes back to their tent, so sick with guilt and stress and sadness when he lets his game face slip, that Al can’t bear to ask him anything. He slumps at his little desk; the weight of dead civilians and living Amestrian hostages across the border in enemy territory is heavy on his shoulders. All Alphonse can do is leave, walk the perimeter and let Ed stay to offer whatever comfort he can.  
  
It’s getting dark early, so the sun is fully down when he rounds the Creta-facing side of the camp and knows that something is wrong. Before he can even assess the instinctive clench in his gut, shots pepper the dirt just inches from his feet. Alphonse claps and the earth heaves; the camp explodes into shouting and gunfire and chaos, and in that moment he remembers Winry on the phone begging him, begging his brother, not to go.  
  
Flames roar up to light the scene, and it looks like every picture of Hell Al’s ever seen. He runs toward the flames and the General’s voice screaming orders and his brother just screaming their names. Something rams him hard in the arm, jerks his body sideways, but there’s no pain until his brother catches him by the back of his collar and says “Al, you’re bleeding!”  
  
But Al can keep his feet, he can clap, he can send his energy out through the ground, and he thinks maybe they should have listened to Winry, but he keeps fighting all the same.  
  
***  
  
Al isn’t sure how he got off the battlefield, or how he came to be unconscious—but both things obviously happened, because he wakes in the med tent, his mind foggy and confused, with Ed by the bedside holding one of Al’s hands in both of his.  
  
Ed hasn’t noticed he’s awake; his brother is looking at their hands, stroking his thumbs over Al’s knuckles, turning Al’s hand over to trace the lines of his palm. Ed’s head jerks up fast, though, when Al squeezes his fingers. “Brother?”  
  
“Hey…how’re you feeling?”  
  
Al tries to take stock; there’s a sort of…absence of pain, which seems different from everyday painlessness. “My arm…”  
  
“Bullet went straight through the muscle. No real permanent damage, according to the doc, though you lost a lot of blood,” Ed reports, the worry line between his eyebrows easing a little. “You probably shouldn’t have done quite so much transmuting with a hole in one bicep.”  
  
His brother smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes; Al looks down at their hands, Ed’s folded around his like a prayer, as though he could transmute Al’s wound away.  
  
Some of the tension around Ed’s eyes suddenly makes more sense.  
  
“Good thing you kept on as long as you did, though. Dunno about their side, but no fatalities on ours, thanks to you,” Ed continues. “Roy still has some trouble with everything but fire, and Hawkeye’s only got so many bullets, you know? But you did good.”  
  
Al searches his memory, comes up with only flashes; flames, Ed’s eyes glinting, great clods of earth flying. “I…what exactly did I do?”  
  
That worry line in Ed’s forehead creases again. “You don’t remember? You made this…moving barricade out of the dirt…shifting it around wherever we needed cover, pushing their forces back when they got too close. Tore the whole landscape up, but without you it would have been a bloodbath, on both sides. Knocked you out pretty good though, after a while keeping all that material in flux. When their…sneak attack team, or whatever you call it—”  
  
“Strike force?”  
  
“Maybe. Anyway, they figured out they weren’t getting anywhere and they retreated after a while, and when they were gone you just…dropped.” Ed squeezes his hand tighter. “Scared the shit outta me, I thought you were dead for a second.”  
  
Al tries for a jaunty grin, and hopes he mostly achieves it. “Takes more than that to kill me, Brother.”  
  
“Yeah.” Then his brother lets out a whoosh of breath, like he’d been holding it this whole time; he drops his head, lifting Al’s hand and pressing it to his forehead, to his cheek. “You saved everybody, Al. A whole fucking battle won with a clap of your hands.”  
  
“Brother,” Al murmurs, brushing Ed’s bangs back with the hand that isn’t caught in a death grip.  
  
“I’d do it again,” Ed says quietly. “I wouldn’t change it.” But he doesn’t raise his face to meet Al’s eyes.


	7. 7 - March 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“What kind of beast would turn its life into words? / What atonement is this all about? / –and yet, writing words like these, I’m also living.”_

  
  
It’s in Pendelton that Ed remembers, viscerally, the fear of death.  
  
Not to say that he felt invincible before, or that he didn’t quite have a grasp of the concept of mortality. He grasped that pretty damn well when he was five. And again when he was eleven. And often, after that, which is a little depressing.  
  
But he’s never felt quite so _helpless_ before. He can still fight—that much he learned when he had all his own limbs—but flesh fists and attitude against bullets and hand grenades isn’t an especially balanced equation. His brother and his lover can clap and shape the world, and Ed is suddenly, unexpectedly, the weakest link. And it sucks, and sometimes it sucks a _lot_ , like an actual vacuum somewhere in his chest where the spark of alchemy used to be.  
  
He doesn’t regret it—can’t allow that train of thought, but also he really _doesn’t_ , because his brother is alive and flesh and amazing—and he wouldn’t take back the exchange he made. But he’s made a lot of mistakes, too, mistakes that led them all to this field of battle, to this moment when he realizes all he can really do as Roy’s bodyguard is to literally guard Roy’s body with his own.  
  
Turns out it isn’t Roy who needs guarding this time, anyway. So as Ed sits by Al’s cot in the assault’s aftermath, waiting for him to wake, he starts to compose phrases in his head. Sentences, paragraphs, memories. And later still, when Al has woken and gone to sleep again and Roy is finally resting too, he scours the camp for a blank notebook and a pen. _Do As I Say, Not As I Do_ , he writes, large and bold, on the inside of the notebook’s front cover.  
  
He’s not sure who he’s talking to, exactly; part some future Elric, in blood or in spirit. Part Roy, part Al, part Winry, part Ling, in case he doesn’t live long enough to tell them all the things he hasn’t said. Part Elicia, almost four now, who felt the beginnings of stubble that Ed let grow on his jaw to prove to Roy he could, and hugged him tighter, murmuring “scratchy like Daddy” into his neck.  
  
Part Sarah, who’ll say someday at school, “The Fullmetal Alchemist was my babysitter,” and the other kids will ask “Who’s the Fullmetal Alchemist?”  
  
Part himself, because if he makes it to some sunny future where he sits in the park and plays chess with the other old fogies, he wants to remember every lesson he learned on the road there.


	8. 8 - August 1915

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“but I want to go on from here with you / fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.”_

  
  
Roy is well suited to lazy country summers; Ed had the right idea convincing him that a trip to Resembool was worth taking time off for. Luckily, Hawkeye and Breda agreed.  
  
 _"I've cleared his schedule," Riza told him. "He needs a break."  
  
"What she means," Breda explained, "is please get him out of our hair."_  
  
It's a little bit surreal, walking up the dirt path from town with Roy beside him in rolled-up shirt sleeves and trousers, Winry and Al up ahead laughing over some inside joke. Ed turns to look when they pass the charred remains of his parents' house, and Roy turns too; it's strange that he knows, really knows, what he's looking at.  
  
"I'm glad you found us," Ed murmurs, and Roy takes his hand, laces their fingers together.  
  
"Me too."  
  
***  
  
Hedonist that he is, Roy can't help but succumb to the ubiquitous apple pie and a cup of Pinako's strong, bitter coffee after dinner. The pie, Winry tells him, is Gracia Hughes' recipe. He would have known without being told; the flavor is distinct—lemon peel, Maes once insisted, is the secret ingredient—and with the taste comes sense-memory of meals there before Elysia was born, wine and laughter late into the night. It's bittersweet, and Ed squeezes his knee beneath the table.  
  
It's still light outside afterward, and Ed pulls him to his feet with a fond "up, you lazy bastard." Some silent communication of glances and eyebrows passes between the brothers, followed by Al rising from the table also.  
  
"Back in a bit," Al says, which seems to be explanation enough for Winry and Pinako. Ed doesn't say a thing, just tugs Roy out the door with him, where the dog scrabbles to her feet at the barest suggestion of a walk.  
  
"Where are we going?" Roy asks, bemused, and Al answers from somewhere behind him.  
  
"To see Mom and Dad."  
  
Ed remains uncharacteristically quiet, walking ahead with ponytail swinging, strands sticking to the sweat at the back of his neck. He is beautiful and golden even in this moment of old, gentle grief, and Roy squeezes his hand.  
  
Beside him now, just as golden as his brother, Al turns his human face to Roy and smiles.  
  
***  
  
The Colonel--no, the Brigadier General now, hard to get used to that still--seems to lose more tension with every passing minute, Al can see it in the line of his shoulders and his back. Part of it is Resembool, the slow, easy pace of this little vacation. Part of it is Ed, awkward and sweet in a way that Al finds both hilarious and endearing. His brother has never been... _besotted_ in quite this way before, and Al studies it, tries to apply it to himself, so he'll know it when it happens to him. Feelings feel different in a flesh-and-blood body; gut instincts actually seem to come from his gut, tenderness and affection spring from somewhere in his chest.  
  
He watches his brother and the Brigadier General and his flesh and blood tells him they could be good together, good for each other. But he minds the little thread of wariness that tingles along his arms, too, and hopes for their happiness, together or apart.


	9. 9 - July 1915

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“Your silence today is a pond where drowned things live_  
_I want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun._  
 _It’s not my own face I see there, but other faces,_  
 _even your face at another age._  
 _Whatever’s lost there is needed by both of us—_  
 _a watch of old gold, a water-blurred fever chart,_  
 _a key… Even the silt and pebbles of the bottom_  
 _deserve their glint of recognition. I fear this silence,_  
 _this inarticulate life. I’m waiting_  
 _for a wind that will gently open this sheeted water_  
 _for once, and show me what I can do_  
 _for you, who have often made the unnameable_  
 _nameable for others, even for me.”_

  
  
  
It’s a PT day, so Ed is babysitting for a bit after Breda and Havoc have left the office. Usually, this means that Roy is already there when Ed gets home. He isn’t today; the house is quiet and still, except for Al sprawled across the couch, dozing.  
  
Ed toes off his boots and hangs his keys on the nail by the door as quietly as he can manage, but his brother doesn’t sleep quite as deeply as he did when he was still new to his body again; Al shifts, mutters, then sits up and peers at Ed. His hair is getting a bit long again, and his bangs stick to the side of his face, and Ed grins at the sight of him. “Hey.”  
  
“Hey.” Al glances around, still a little bleary from the nap and the heat. “Where’s the Gen—ah, Roy?” he asks, still struggling with a politeness that goes down to the bone, no matter how many times he’s told to call ‘the General’ by his name. Ed likes it when Al remembers; he gets a warm little thrill from it, this further proof that Roy is family now.  
  
“Dunno. He didn’t call?”  
  
“Not that I heard.”  
  
“Huh.” Ed flops down on top of Al’s feet, and his brother squirms to tug them free, settling them in Ed’s lap when he succeeds. “It’s kind of late.”  
  
“Yeah,” Al agrees with a frown. They lapse into comfortable silence, Al thoughtful, Ed fiercely squashing a tiny thread of worry.  
  
Roy’s a big boy, and his reaction time with the clap alchemy has improved; he can take care of himself.  
  
An hour later the brothers are still sitting together on the couch, and Roy still isn’t home. Ed is considering wandering around the city looking for him when Al twitches with some kind of realization. “Oh,” he says into the quiet.  
  
Ed looks over at him, follows his gaze toward the fireplace. No, above the fireplace, the photos on the mantlepiece. A faded shot of Hawkeye as a teenager. Ed, shorter and younger and grinning in that old red coat, Al a looming hulk of steel behind him. Roy trying to look serious, with a beaming Hughes throwing an arm around his shoulders. Their graduation from the Academ—oh.  
  
“ _Oh_. I…I totally forgot,” Ed murmurs, suddenly guilty. “I thought he was kind of quiet this morning, but…I didn’t even think…”  
  
“I forgot too, Brother,” Al says quickly, which really means _stop feeling guilty right this minute, Brother._  
  
“I should go…be with him.”  
  
“ _We_ should go be with him,” Al corrects, already rising. “Unless you think it’s a…a couple thing?”  
  
Ed considers. He’s never had to grieve as part of a couple—he’s used to having Al with him, sharing grief between brothers, and Hughes was sort of like Roy’s brother, so… “No…I think it’s a friend thing. A family thing,” he decides. Al nods, and reaches for his shoes.  
  
***  
  
The cemetery isn’t a very long walk, but they’re both sweating in the heat by the time they arrive. There’s a riot of flowers at the grave—Gracia and Elysia, and perhaps other visitors, must have come and gone already. Roy is just standing with his hands in his pockets, jacket tucked in the crook of his arm.  
  
Ed thought they might find him talking; Ed likes to talk to gravestones, likes to fill the silence, and he thought maybe Roy would as well, but he’s utterly silent as they approach. He doesn’t turn to greet them, either, but when they are close enough to see his face in profile, he doesn’t look devastated. Just quietly, thoughtfully sad.  
  
Ed steps up beside him and loops an arm through his; Al does the same on the other side. Between them, Roy smiles.  
  
_We’re looking after him now_ , Ed thinks, and keeps it to himself.


	10. 10 - June 1915

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“…that without tenderness, we are in hell.”_

  
  
_How could I have ever thought that this house was too big?_  
  
It was strange at first, Ed's uneven footsteps reaching him from some other room, an extra toothbrush beside the sink (though no extra shaving kit--to Roy's great surprise, Ed has been shaving since age fifteen with whatever soap was to hand and a straight razor blade transmuted from the casing of his automail, and now he just uses Roy's kit). What were once solitary evenings by the fire, a glass or five of brandy and a trudge up to bed have become filled with laughter, with meals cooked in the kitchen instead of takeaway, with sex in the kitchen too, and the bathroom and the sofa and the hall and their bed. It takes a little getting used to, but somehow it _works_ , and Roy's not going to poke it too hard for fear this bubble of happiness will pop. God knows he needs it, with everything he's got to do in the aftermath of the coup.  
  
Of course, when Alphonse arrives, the sex gets strictly limited to their bedroom. But the laughter increases, and so does the food (which the boy can certainly put away, just like his brother, and it's a wonder to see the dangerously sharp angles of him slowly rounding out). With Al in the house there are alchemy experiments (Al's and Roy's, he needs hands-on lessons with the clap alchemy sometimes), books and papers and research (Al's and Ed's, their minds never _ever_ stop working), a cat door for the neighborhood strays (Al's alone--the damn things are always underfoot, but neither Ed nor Roy can deny Al's pleading looks and happy glow). There is quite a bit of fraternal roughhousing, ostensibly for exercise, and Roy is grateful that they take out all their frenetic energy on each other. He used to have energy like that; he can remember scraps with Maes in the cadet dorms like it was yesterday.  
  
Roy returns from work on a warm evening, the first hints of summer in the air, and steps into a silent house. A sheaf of paper covered in Ed's chickenscratch has slid from the coffee table onto the floor; the plates from lunch are still sitting on the kitchen table. There are jackets hung by the door, but no shoes. The stillness is like the calm after a tornado, the evidence of its path strewn about everywhere. Roy smiles to himself. The house is still, but full of potential energy, a pause for breath before motion and noise return. How could this house have ever loomed huge and empty? It's bursting at the seams, and Roy thinks he knows what's filling it. Maes grins crookedly at him from the mantle, knocked precariously askew by some wayward Elric wind. Roy doesn't bother to straighten him--Maes always did like a little chaos.


	11. 11 - August 1915

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“I want to reach for your hand as we scale the path, / to feel your arteries glowing in my clasp, / never failing to note the small, jewel-like flower / unfamiliar to us, nameless till we rename her…”_

  
  
Resembool is firmly in the grip of summer now; the road into town is dotted with heat-loving wildflowers, more varieties than Ed can identify. Gardens and farms are high with corn, feed corn and sweet, while other fields are being turned over and planted with pumpkins and squash. Baking sunlight and blue skies, fresh air and insects and the farther-off bleating of the spring’s lambs transform the open countryside into a different world from the one Ed’s been living in; he grins around at it all with hands in pockets and a leisurely pace.  
  
Ahead of him, Alphonse is pointing up into a sycamore by the side of the path. The steady murmur of his voice carries, though the actual words don’t, and Winry is nodding and grinning and craning her neck up to see whatever he’s pointing at. It must be something good, because she comes running back to Ed, cheeks pinked and flyaway strands of hair floating around her face. “There’s three hives all together in this tree! Al says they’re all different bees!”  
  
Ed raises an eyebrow and smirks in an expression he’s sure, even as he’s making it, he picked up from Roy. “How shocking!”  
  
The look Winry gives him is a cross between fond, exasperated, and something sharper that he can’t identify; she hooks her hand into the crook of his elbow to tug him toward the tree. “You’re such an ass.”  
  
Her hand is warm through the fabric of his shirt; a breeze gusts by, warm, but somehow it sends a chill up his spine. Winry points up into the tree at a huge hanging teardrop of thin gray paper, and a smooth scar in the trunk a little lower down, the opening plastered over with honeycomb, and another nest peeking out from around the other side, wide flat layers of tight comb like a stack of pancakes. They’re heavy with honey and busy with the comings and goings of humming workers, just enough challenge to fuel country kids’ dares.  
  
“Hey, remember that time—“ Al starts, and doesn’t even have to finish; Winry laughs, and Ed sighs.  
  
“Poor Ed, your whole face blew up with the swelling…”  
  
It’s a moderately humiliating memory, but Winry’s laugh breaks through to make him grin, and her hand is still tucked into the crook of his arm. “But we did have lots of honey cakes that summer.”  
  
“ _Honey cakes_ ,” Al moans, and pulls the everpresent notebook out of his trouser pocket, jotting it down. “Can we make honey cakes tonight?”  
  
“Sure!” Winry answers with a grin, linking her free arm through Al’s, and it’s like nothing ever happened, like nothing ever changed. It must show in his expression, because Winry gives him a funny sort of smile and squeezes his arm.  
  
 _“You’re awfully dense, Brother,”_ Al says in his memory. _“She loves you. Go a little easy on her.”_  
  
A train whistle blares north of town, and from their vantage on on the road’s incline they can see it coming, long and sleek and steaming, along the track in the distance.  
  
“Crap, we’ll be late!”  
  
“Race you!” Al shouts and takes off laughing down the path. Winry gives another tug to Ed’s arm and pulls free, sprinting away, and the breeze carries her yell back to him.  
  
“Come on, Ed, hurry up!”  
  
Ed pointedly ignores the way her skirt flares up behind her and hurries after them, pulling ahead halfway there with a manic grin, and hits the platform just in time to throw himself into Roy’s surprised arms the moment he steps off the train.


	12. 12 - October 1915

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“…a touch is enough to let us know / we’re not alone in the universe, even in sleep…”_

  
  
Roy wakes to moonlight trickling in through the curtains and Ed’s mouth wet on the pulse point in his throat and Ed’s hand tracing patterns on the underside of his cock, which is much more awake than Roy himself.  
  
In the dim he can just barely pick out the hands of the clock—just after three—and he stops caring when the edges of Ed’s teeth press gently on his skin.  
  
“Mmnhmm,” he says, and it was meant to be coherent, but he doesn’t much care when Ed presses closer against his back and wraps his fingers tight around Roy’s cock.  
  
It’s a good thing Ed understands the question anyway. “Bad dream,” he pants into Roy’s shoulder, his cock a hard bar of heat against Roy’s ass.  
  
And the way Ed’s hips are moving in time with his hand is rather distracting, but when he whimpers “fuck, oh fuck” and presses harder along the length of Roy’s back, Roy can feel the rapid flutter of his heart and a trembling running through his limbs. The meaning of the words _bad dream_ finally occur, and Roy covers Ed’s hand with his own, then twists to roll Ed onto his back.  
  
“Roy,” Ed gasps on an indrawn breath, and Roy brings his body weight to bear on his smaller lover, covering Ed, surrounding him, trapping their cocks together in the slick heat between their stomachs. Ed wraps his limbs around him, digs in with his heels and his fingernails, presses his mouth to Roy’s so hard their teeth clack together.  
  
Roy lets him, kisses him slow and open and wet, grinds their hips together until Ed is whining in the back of his throat. His grip loosens a little and tightens again, the tension in his muscles changing, shifting as the dream is burned away and need takes over. The moonlight picks out the planes of Ed’s face, catches on his sweaty bangs and his eyelashes and his cheekbones, and it’s all a blur of silver and gold and heat until Ed sobs “ _please_ ” into his mouth and slides two fingers into the cleft of Roy’s ass. Then Ed’s coming hot on their stomachs and those two fingers _press_ , and Roy’s vision whites out as he follows Ed over.  
  
They come down slow, wrapped up together and breathing hard, and Ed pushes and shoves him sleepily into the position he wants, pillowing his head on Roy’s collarbone. “Mmm.”  
  
“Better?” Roy murmurs into his hair, stroking the nape of Ed’s neck with his thumb.  
  
Ed presses a kiss and a sigh into his chest. “Love you.”  
  
Roy takes that as the answer it almost is, and tugs the blankets closer around them.


	13. 13 - June 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“…whatever we do together is pure invention / the maps they gave us were out of date /  
by years… we’re driving through the desert / wondering if the water will hold out…”_

  
  
How he wound up on this mission, Al still doesn't really understand.  
  
He gets the sequence of events: peace talks at the border with Creta stall, Cretan extremists break the ceasefire, Al takes a bullet through the shoulder but manages to prevent further casualties with judicious (or, to hear Ed tell it, "truly awesome") use of alchemy, the Fuhrer arrives to take the peace talks firmly back in hand, Al is patched up and cleared for travel within the month and promptly shipped East.  
  
"Lieutenant Ross requested an alchemist to advise and assist with the Eastern Rail project," was how Roy put it.  
  
Ed, at least, was more honest: "Less chance of you getting shot building railroad track."  
  
So Al, despite the arguments he mounted in favor of staying with his brother, finds himself swathed in the lightweight sort of Ishvalan linen that children and the elderly wear (because Al can deal with heat, but the baking desert sun is a different story altogether), hanging desperately onto the narrow back of a camel while Lieutenant Ross snickers politely into her hand.  
  
He let himself be persuaded, that's the crux of it. He let Ed's Big Brother face and Roy's Commanding The Troops face convince him that this was really the best use of his time and intellect.  
  
And okay--actually, Al's had notes and theories on alchemic improvement of the Amestrian railway system for years. To have a chance to use them for the development of a whole new subsystem of rails, through Ishval and onward to Xing, is a thrilling prospect. Security factors, weather and environmental factors, rider comfort, efficient fuel use and supply storage...he gets a little giddy just thinking about it. Of course, his academic fantasies hadn't included getting sand in unmentionable places (a sensation he'd been curious about after hearing Ed complain, but now understands is supremely irritating) or swaying for hours on end in the saddle of his... _minnrakh_ , if he's remembering the word correctly.  
  
At least he _has_ a saddle, with a pommel in front for him to cling to and another that pokes him in the small of his back whenever the pace quickens, and a padded cushion for a seat that somehow does nothing to ease his saddlesore rear end. Some of the Ishvalans at the camel stables were riding around bareback, and making it look supremely easy as they did.  
  
"Don't fight the motion so much," Ross tells him after he shifts uncomfortably and almost loses his balance for the six hundredth time. "Stay loose, go with the flow."  
  
Al looks over out of the corner of his eye, watching the gentle undulations of camel-and-rider; they are like one machine with two pieces, seamlessly in synch. She's crossed the desert on horse- and camelback once already, Al reminds himself. The few times he'd ridden the huge draft mare two farms over as a child hardly compares.  
  
Still, he's used to being _good_ at things, so he tries to focus. _Loose. Flow._ The camel has an easy, even stride in spite of the sand; there's a rhythm to it that Al can feel in his calves. He lets the tightness out of his limbs in increments, and as he does, that slow rhythm slides in to replace it. When he doesn't immediately fall off, his spine relaxes, curves into the sway of the camel's body. It's far from perfect, he suspects, but Ross is grinning at him as if she wants to give him candy or stickers for his effort, and he can't help but grin back.


	14. 14 - December 1915

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“you said, He keeps / on steering headlong into the waves, on purpose / while we crouched in the open hatchway / vomiting into plastic bags / for three hours between St. Pierre and Miquelon. / I never felt closer to you.”_

  
  
When they finally return to the guest quarters, Ed collapses face first into Roy's mattress (their mattress, really--Ed has his own in the room next door, and hasn't used it once) with an unintelligible whine. Roy would laugh, but he feels the same; something about the North (and, he suspects, Olivier Armstrong's...forceful manner) drains any vigor right out of a person.  
  
Roy spares the time to strip to his long underwear and pull Ed's boots off his feet before he shoves himself ungracefully into the little space Ed's sprawl leaves him, presses his mouth to Ed's ear and murmurs "Aquaroya tomorrow."  
  
Ed mutters something heartfelt into the mattress, which Roy interprets as "fuckin' finally." They each wriggle closer at the same time, and it warms Roy like no fireplace or sunny vacation ever could to feel Ed's icy nose snuffling against his neck, Ed's chilled fingers weaving their way into Roy's clothes.  
  
Taking a break was Breda's idea, to start. "It's a part of your public image we've sort of been ignoring," he said. "It's great that you're always in the news doing political stuff, but people need to see you as a family man, too."  
  
Ed snorted, and Roy raised an eyebrow. "Family man?"  
  
"Committed, responsible, blah blah blah," Breda explained with a lazy wave of his hand, which cleared everything right up. "Polls are suggesting that they don't so much care who you're with, as long as you treat 'em right and don't go tomcatting around anymore."  
  
"Damn right," Ed added with enthusiasm, and a weekend away was set.  
  
Now they just have to get there—which they will, on the morning train, if the worst of the snow holds off just a little longer. Roy lays kisses in Ed's hair and hopes for the best.  
  
Falman comes to wake them earlier than expected, and efficiently packs their luggage while Roy tries to wake up enough to be mortified at his state of entanglement with his lover and Ed drools on his shoulder moaning "coffee" in sleep-muted tones.  
  
"There's been a shift in the weather, sir. The snow's expected to pick up late morning, so if we can get you out on the first train, you'll probably get out of range in time," he tells them as he snaps the suitcases smartly shut. "I'll be back in twenty-seven minutes to bring your bags to the car."  
  
Roy stares dumbly at the door as it closes, until Ed's hand wriggles out of the blankets and into Roy's lap. "Come back and warm me up," he purrs, voice sleep-husky, and Roy steels himself (the parts of him that aren't steel-hard already) and manages a weak "But...twenty-seven minutes..."  
  
Ed growls from his blanket cave. "Plenty of time."  
  
***  
  
Thirty-four minutes later, their luggage stowed in the warmed and waiting car, Ed swears a blue streak at the snarled knot in his hair and Roy hunts for his left sock. When they make it downstairs and buckle in, Falman's expression is as bland as ever, but there's a Riza-like quality to it that is somehow accusing.  
  
***  
  
Snow. As far as the eye can see, in all directions that the view from their private car affords them. It would be scenic, if it wasn't the same exact view, but even snowier, that Roy saw when the train groaned to a stop three hours ago.  
  
 _If only twenty-seven minutes had actually been long enough._  
  
"Don't say it," Ed growls.  
  
"Say what?"  
  
"That twenty-seven minutes wasn't long enough. I can _hear_ you thinking it."  
  
Roy holds up his hands in an innocent gesture. "Not at all. I was just going to say that when I'm Fuhrer, trains won't leave without me, and we can have as much morning nookie as we want."  
  
Ed snorts, glances at him with a smile quavering in the corner of his mouth. " _Nookie?_ "  
  
"I hear that's what the kids are calling it these days."  
  
That gets him a surprised bark of laughter, one of Roy's favorite sounds.  
  
***  
  
Roy is watching Ed devour the substandard lunch the dining car had to offer and pushing his own around the plate when their military escort, a young man with a bushy red moustache and a serious expression, pokes his head in and salutes.  
  
"Now they're estimating another few hours before we can get moving, sir. The engineer seems confident we'll be off before sundown, but not much before."  
  
Ed doesn't react, except for the barest slumping of his shoulders; he needs a break as much as Roy does, though he'd never admit it. After all they've been through, the bitter weather isn't easy on either of them.  
  
"Understood, Sergeant. No need to update us on further delays; we'll start moving when we start moving, and in the mean time I'd rather not be disturbed."  
  
Ed glances up at that, raising an eyebrow even as he inhales the last bites of his own food and starts in on what's left of Roy's. The eyebrow says "what, in this cold?" and "on a train bench seat?" and "twice in one day?" which don't add up to "no," but it's not quite what Roy has in mind anyway.  
  
If the sergeant is thinking the same thing, he hides it well behind Briggs sobriety and impressive facial hair. "Yes, sir," he replies with a precise salute, and leaves them be. Roy stands, and meets Ed's considering gaze.  
  
"Done?"  
  
His lover glances down at the few scraps left as though he'd been planning to lick the plate, then rises too and reaches for Roy's hand. "Yep."  
  
His expression now is a "take me where you want me" sort of compliance, with a hint of "take me _how_ you want me" in the sharpness of his eyes; Roy just smiles and tugs him along the quiet length of the stranded train to their car and pulls the door shut behind them.  
  
This will be the tricky part, so Roy takes a long look at the bench seats, the cushions, all the bits of hardware and solder holding them together. Ed gives a little hum of interest, reading the intent in Roy's study if not the design, and circles Roy to mold against his back and dig his nose in between Roy's shoulders. When Roy lifts his hands, flexes them a little to ease the stiffness, Ed slides his own hands along Roy's arms. They clap together; Ed sucks in a breath and presses closer as the alchemy ignites, surges through Roy and crackles around them, reshaping the tiny room. When it fades, the facing seats have combined into a wide sort of chaise, the head tucked beneath the windows, with a rough blanket spread over it. Not stylish, but certainly serviceable. Ed nudges Roy's behind with his hips, more playful than seductive, and peeks around Roy to survey the job.  
  
"You're getting better at this," he finally murmurs with approval, quiet but genuine, as Roy pulls back the blanket and toes off his shoes. Ed's boots take longer, so he sits on the edge of the chaise to unlace them as Roy sprawls onto the cushions, and when the boots are off Roy tugs Ed over himself along with the blanket. Ed's body fits snugly between his legs and against his chest, and they sigh together in their pocket of warmth.  
  
It's a whiteout beyond the window, but here in their cozy nest the snow can't reach them; even Ed's metal leg is warming with their body heat.  
  
"Will the cold weather leg be all right for Aquaroya?" Roy murmurs, "Because I can have the office send for Miss Rockbell—"  
  
And the way Ed stills, tension singing through his limbs all at once like the flip of a switch, is so startling that Roy hastily backtracks. "Or not, you know best. I just want you to be comfortable."  
  
"This leg's fine," Ed mumbles into his chest, then raises his face and takes a breath, as if to say more. Roy cuddles him closer with arms and legs, waiting.  
  
Ed kisses him instead, slow and hot and full of sharp teeth, and when the train starts to move Roy doesn't notice it at all.


	15. 15 - November 1915

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“Only she who says / she did not choose, is the loser in the end.”_

  
  
This is Ed’s first automail appointment since he took up with Roy, and he’s feeling conflicted about having Winry between his legs, peering intently at his steel inner thigh. On the one hand, it’s no different from the last nine years of his life—Winry’s his mechanic, and it’s never exactly comfortable to have the automail tinkered with, and knowing there’s going to be searing pain that he never gets used to at some point in the visit has always kept any kind of embarassing teenage…reactions…completely out of the picture. But he’s never really thought about the fact that it’s Winry, who has always been a girl but whose female-ness is becoming more and more noticeable to Ed the older they get, and she’s sitting between his legs with her face less than six inches from his dick. Now that he knows what a really good blowjob is like, it’s hard to ignore that side of things.  
  
Thinking about blowjobs makes him think of Roy, which of course reminds him that maybe it’s not so much Winry’s femaleness, but just that she’s…well, okay, she’s hot, and Ed has eyes, and they’re not kids anymore. But the thought flies out of his head when she tightens a screw somewhere and it sends a jolt of pain radiating up his leg and his side.  
  
“So what are you going as, now that you’re not a State Alchemist?”  
  
Ed wrenches his attention from the conflicts in his own mind to Winry’s voice. “Huh?”  
  
“Up north. You’re going as his…”  
  
“Uh…personal assistant. According to the paperwork. Really it’s more that he needs somebody watching his back.”  
  
“And they don’t care that you’re watching his _backside_ , too? Or they don’t know?”  
  
“Winry!” he growls, or tries to, until she twists another screw and his voice comes out more like a squeal. “What the hell!”  
  
She slams her wrench down hard on the steel instrument table, rattling the other tools with the force of it, and looks away. Ed props himself up on his elbows, heart hammering in his chest, and Winry blows out a sharp breath. “Sorry.”  
  
Ed’s mouth works but nothing comes out; he swallows and tries again. “They…I mean, by now mostly everybody—”  
  
“I don’t—” Winry starts, looking back toward him, but not quite at his eyes. “I don’t actually want to know.” Then the energy seems to drain out of her and she slumps, resting her forehead on Ed’s left knee. “I just…I’m sorry.”  
  
“Win…” Ed begins, and she closes her eyes against his words; he pauses, watching her, then curls forward to curl his hand around the loose hair hanging down in front of her ear. It’s the color of corn silk, and it slips through his fingers as easily as water, and Winry’s eyes open a little again and angle toward him. “I used to think…well, I never wanted to plan too far ahead, before. Fix Al, fix the country, but past that…I sort of thought I wouldn’t actually survive past that.”  
  
Winry winces, and he gives her hair a soft tug before letting it go. “But when I did start to think about a future beyond that…well, I know everybody always figured either Al or I’d marry you someday.”  
  
“It’s okay, Ed, I get it. That was never going to happen. You don’t swing that way, isn’t that how they say it in the city?”  
  
“That’s not—” Ed huffs out a frustrated breath. “That isn’t the problem. It’s not that I couldn’t…love you like that. I could. Maybe I already do, a little.”  
  
That makes her stiffen, staring him down with sudden intensity, and he continues before she can formulate a response.  
  
“But I also love Roy like that. It’s…he’s…it’s just how things worked out. I’m with him, and I love him, and he loves me. I’m…I’m spoken for.”  
  
“So what you’re saying is,” she murmurs, and her expression is closing off while he watches, shuttering up like windows against his efforts at honesty, “I had bad timing.”  
  
What can Ed say to that? What answer is both most truthful and least hurtful?  
  
Before he can answer, the phone rings.


	16. 16 - November 1915

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“Across a city from you, I’m with you […] I can hear your breath tonight, I know how your face / lies upturned, the halflight tracing / your generous, delicate mouth / where grief and laughter sleep together.”_

  
  
It's too late in the morning to still be settling in and too early to get ready for lunch, so Roy thinks about Ed instead of his paperwork. Ed on a southeast train, rumbling toward Resembool. Ed watching the city give way to fields of turned earth and herds of sheep drifting like clouds and villages so small you could stand at one end and spit to reach the other. It's damn picturesque, and Ed looks good there. Roy knows, he's seen the effect of that peaceful backdrop on Ed several times. It's something he'd quite like to see again now, but he has other preparations to make for the upcoming Northern HQ and Briggs trip, and Ed will surely look beautiful against the white of snow as well.  
  
Someone puts a sandwich in front of him, and he eats it distractedly--he's on a roll--but when he comes to a stopping point and realizes he hasn't thought about Ed in hours, it marks a sudden downturn in his productivity. Ed must be at the Rockbells' by now. Perhaps there's lunch on the table for him, at the very least an apple pie. Or will the work begin immediately, measuring and fitting and adjusting to make Ed cold-weather-ready? Roy avoids thinking about that too much; he's never been present for one of Ed's automail changes, but he knows from word of mouth and from Ed's own confession that it's painful every time. The idea of Ed in pain makes his stomach churn sickly, and if Roy can't be there to lend moral support, he'd rather not dwell on it happening at all. He dives resolutely back into his work.  
  
It's a shock to find the sun has already set when Riza clears her throat and startles him out of his thoughts. "The rest of this can wait for tomorrow, sir," she tells him in a tone that brooks no argument. He tugs his watch from his pocket—8:21pm. The thought of going home to his empty bed, empty kitchen, empty house makes him want to stay and work through dinner, but Riza reads his mind (as usual) and plucks the pen from his hand. "Go home," she commands, and Roy clamps down on the urge to salute. He stopped wondering how she does that a long time ago.  
  
So he walks home, and thinks of Ed. Has he eaten? Surely there's pie by _now,_ even if there was mechanic business earlier. Perhaps he's phoned Al, who left Resembool for a bit of a vacation in Dublith until Roy and Ed get back from this trip. Perhaps _Roy_ should call Alphonse, later on, and make sure he arrived all right.  
  
Only after he's spoken to Ed, of course. Roy's hand itches for the receiver at the thought. The moment he crosses his threshold, he's dialing.


	17. 17 - April 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_"No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone. / The accidents happen, we’re not heroines, / they happen in our lives like car crashes..."_

  
  
The day they put Al on a train toward Ishval is the day everything happens at once.  
  
They're waiting for passengers to disembark, mostly military personnel and support workers from nearby towns, when a familiar figure comes bounding down the train steps in low-slung coveralls and a head scarf, lugging a suitcase behind her.  
  
She's got the nerve to look surprised to see them, Ed and Al and Roy all standing in a row on the platform, as though she hadn't just appeared out of nowhere unannounced, and drops her bag with a thud just shy of Ed's right shoe. "How did you know I was coming?" she asks. "I wasn't sure myself until this morning."  
  
Ed finds he can't formulate an answer. It's too surreal that Winry is standing here in front of him, on the platform, her shoulders and arms and throat and clavicle bare and pale in the late afternoon sun, beautiful. Ed's noticed that she's beautiful before, of course he has, but it's very much a bad thing to notice _now_ , with Roy (who is also beautiful and who he loves) standing just at Ed's side.  
  
"We didn't," Roy replies when both Elrics are too flabbergasted to speak, and Ed startles at the sound of his smooth voice. "We're here to see Alphonse off."  
  
"What? Where are you going? That's rotten timing, but I'm glad it wasn't rottener and I can see you for a minute!" Winry says in a rush, and throws her arms around Al, who recovers his senses a moment later and hugs her tightly with a blinding grin.  
  
"Winry!"  
  
She pulls back to look at him, then at Ed, then back to Al. "Yes...are you shell-shocked or something? Why are you leaving? Where are you going? Nobody tells me anything!"  
  
"Um," says Al, because he's flesh now and wrenches to the head are not so easy to shake off, "I've got to board, but Brother can tell you all about it!" He hoists his military-issue rucksack, squeezes Ed and Roy in successive swift, tight hugs, and bounds away onto the train. "I'll call when I get there!" he shouts, and disappears into the car.  
  
Winry turns back to Ed. There are tendrils of hair escaping her scarf, little wisps that stick to her face, and Ed has a powerful urge to tuck them back in for her.  
  
"Granny says hi," Winry tells him pointedly. Her tone says _call her more often you jerk_ and _why are you standing there staring at me like an idiot_ and _boys are so dumb._  
  
"Hi," says Ed, and Winry beams.  
  
***  
  
It turns out she's in not in Pendleton as Ed's mechanic, or as a mechanic at all, but rather as a volunteer field medic and surgeon's assistant.  
  
"There was an announcement on the radio," she explains as they ride back to camp, Roy driving and Ed beside him and Winry in the back seat like a little kid, chattering away. "Said people with medical experience were needed at the western front."  
  
Ed squirms. Roy driving, the easy competence of his limbs, is always a turn-on, and Ed finds himself half-hard and uncomfortable and confused by the many different signals this current collision of worlds is sending him. "Well, good. That's good. I mean, yes. Though things have been quiet since. Um."  
  
Roy's eyes slide over to Ed, but he doesn't comment. Winry, on the other hand, smells Ed's hesitation like blood in the water.  
  
"Since what."  
  
It isn't even a question.  
  
"SinceweweresneakattackedandAlgotshotbuthekepteverybodyelsesafewithalchemy," Ed spits out in a rush, hoping against hope that all of Winry's tools are in her suitcase, and not her pockets.  
  
***  
  
If anyone knows how to make her grudge known, it's Winry Rockbell. It's a small camp, really, so she and Ed cross paths about a million times a day. For the first three days of her tenure on the medical squad, she doesn't acknowledge Ed's existence at all.  
  
By now Ed has gotten over the initial shock of her arrival, and is starting to get angry, himself. Okay, so he didn't call to tell her Al was shot. Or that Al was being transferred elsewhere. It was a hectic time! Ed was busy! Brothers to watch, lovers to guard, hair to pull out of his head with worry, a churning stomach whenever he thought of the alchemy his little brother had wrought and his own still-painful uselessness in that regard.  
  
The little brother in question is, of course, exempt from Winry's wrath; apparently a perforated arm was a good enough excuse not to pick up a phone, and she spent hours on the line with him when he called to report in from Ishval. Still, it isn't the first time in their lives Winry has given Ed the silent treatment, and it won't be the last. All Ed can do is keep an eye on her, when she knows he's looking (she ignores him, but not pointedly, just...entirely, doing her best to make distance where there just physically can't be any) and when she doesn't (bright, chipper, confident, capable, strong, willing—she is everything the medical team could ask for and more). When she's sorted out what she wants to say, she'll find him.  
  
What worries Ed more is Roy. They aren't particularly affectionate in public, simply because there's work to be done and it's easier all around if they're discreet, but in the relative privacy of their tent, Roy has grown quieter. More tired. Just as inclined to pull Ed into his arms or pepper his hair with little kisses, but there's something in his eyes, in the slump of his shoulders at the makeshift desk, that isn't right.  
  
Ed watches him, and kisses him, and crawls over him in the middle of the night to map every inch of his skin, and hope that telling him he loves him a dozen times a day is enough.


	18. 18 - August 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_"the more I love the more I think_   
_two people together is a miracle._   
_You’re telling the story of your life_   
_for once, a tremor breaks the surface of your words._   
_The story of our lives becomes our lives._   
_..._   
_I feel estrangement, yes. As I’ve felt dawn_   
_pushing towards daybreak. Something: a cleft of light—?_   
_Close between grief and anger, a space opens_   
_where I am Adrienne alone. And growing colder."_

  
  
The house is cold and still when Roy pushes the door open, his own bags and Ed's travel case gripped tenuously with one hand. Everything's just as they left it, but with an extra layer of dust; it smells of home, but not as vibrantly as Roy remembers. He leaves the bags in the entryway and tosses his uniform jacket over the back of the couch, leans against it to tug his boots off and leaves them where they fall. He's too exhausted for neatness, or a bite of food, or even the stairs up to bed. Ed will wake him when he comes home from pulling strings for Winry at the local hotel. Roy has turned a blind eye to Ed's State-Alchemist-watch-flashing thus far, why should he start now and deny Miss Rockbell a comfortable room the night before her debriefing? Enough of a hassle that she had to return from the front with them anyway, just to be questioned and pressured and cursorily thanked for her efforts.  
  
No, Roy will just take a little nap on the couch, and when Ed comes home they'll have dinner and perhaps place a call to the Ishval base camp in hope of reaching Alphonse, and then they'll drag themselves up to bed and sleep a full night curled around each other in the way front-line lack of privacy has denied them. A careful clap of his hands ignites the fireplace to a gently crackling blaze, its heat slowly melting Pendleton away.  
  
Roy wakes again when the fire's mostly burned itself down to embers; the room is warmer than it was, but remains dark and still, largely undisturbed. His watch is digging into his hip; he tugs it out, blinks at the numbers.  
  
3:41 in the morning.  
  
Roy levers himself upright, aching and stiff. He slowly ascends the stairs. Slides out of his uniform, lets it puddle on the floor beside the bed. Flips his pillow over so he's not laying on dust, pulls the sheet back, tucks himself in. The bed is cold, and so is he. He'll be angry in the morning, and hurt and scared and he'll snap at Ed even as he hopes there's a reasonable explanation. They'll fight about it, either because Ed is guilty or because Roy doesn't trust him or maybe both. Roy will remember the way Ed looked at Winry in Pendleton when he thought no one was watching; Roy will forget, momentarily, the way Ed looks at _him_ , every time, all the time, as though he's besotted, as though Roy put the sun in the sky, as though Roy's a pain in the ass but Ed's in love with him anyway.  
  
Now, though, he's just too tired to feel anything but a chill, so he pulls the blankets up to his chin and goes back to sleep.


	19. 19 - August 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_"Am I speaking coldly when I tell you in a dream / or in this poem, There are no miracles? / (I told you from the first I wanted daily life […] two people together is a work / heroic in its ordinariness…”_

  
  
Roy's study has undergone some changes since the Elrics took it over. Roy's desk, which used to be the central feature, has been moved into a corner to accommodate a secondhand drafting table Ed picked up for cheap from a local alchemical architect. In the aftermath of the coup, architecture firms across the city were inundated with work—and therefore money—and the alchemist in question took the opportunity for an equipment upgrade.  
  
Roy can't even remember what color the poor beleaguered thing is anymore, its surface swathed in disorderly piles of books (some of them from Roy's rather extensive collection of alchemy texts, but Ed and Al take such care with them that he doesn't mind the theft), sheaves of notes and scribbles and the odd drafting tool (purchased along with the table--useful for arrays which require exacting precision, something Ed is out of practice with), and maps and travelogues of a number of baffling kinds (some political, some geographical, some inexplicable webs of lines that Roy suspects are Xingese).  
  
Roy's own towering but neat piles of paperwork, lining the edges of his desk and stacked at regular intervals on the surrounding floor like some kind of bureaucratic stone circle, seems intensely dull by comparison. Ed either senses this, or genuinely wants Roy's input, because when they work here together Roy is inevitably drawn in by Ed's research and questions and mutterings. With Alphonse away, Ed lacks a sounding board; the parcels Al sends from his travels along the proposed Ishval-Xing rail route are small compensation for the separation of their sometimes startlingly in-sync minds.  
  
Today, Ed is sitting at his table with his head in his hands. Roy watches him from the doorway, too exhausted to do more than watch, too wrung out from fighting, too ashamed of words whose aftertaste is bitter in his mouth.  
  
Roy thinks perhaps he is too old to change. He tries to change the country from the rotten center outward; Ed tries to change alchemy beginning in its farthest reaches. He has a wanderlust Roy can't distract him from forever.  
  
Roy or Winry. Either way, they'll both be left waiting for Ed's restless feet to carry him back safely. _At least,_ Roy thinks, _Winry has some practice at it. I was waiting for Ed all along and didn't know it._  
  
"Al's coming back the day after tomorrow. Called him last night from the hotel," Ed murmurs. "He's coming here to get some stuff, and then going to Resembool with Winry for a while."  
  
Roy's throat slowly closes up; he can hear his own heartbeat in his ears.  
  
"I'm gonna go too. Just...just to...figure things out."  
  
 _When will you be back?_ Roy tries to ask.  
  
"Will you be back?" he asks instead. His own voice startles him, low and gravelly.  
  
Ed turns; his eyes are swollen and tired, his mouth an unhappy line. He looks at Roy for a long, unbearable moment before pushing back his chair, crossing the distance between them to wrap his fingers around the back of Roy's neck. He rises on tip-toe, kisses Roy quietly, openmouthed. He wraps an arm around Roy's ribs and squeezes.  
  
There's nothing Roy can do but kiss him back, fold Ed's body in close, memorize the way they fit.  
  
Ed pushes Roy down on the little loveseat beside the door— _"For when we get tired of thinking, Roy!"_ \--and straddles his lap, sure and measured.  
  
Later, sweating and golden in the late afternoon light, Ed throws his head back as he rides, the long column of his throat bared, flesh thigh trembling with effort. "Yes," he breathes toward the ceiling, " _yes_ , Roy."  
  
It isn't an answer to the question. Roy lets himself hear it as one, anyway.


	20. 20 - August 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“That conversation we were always on the edge_   
_of having, runs on in my head,_   
_..._   
_And this is she_   
_with whom I tried to speak, whose hurt, expressive head_   
_turning aside from pain, is dragged down deeper_   
_where it cannot hear me,_   
_and soon I shall know I was talking to my own soul.”_

  
  
It's been sixteen months. The same span of time Ed was alive before Al was born. Thinking about it that way, it seems like an eyeblink; he can barely remember a time before Al.  
  
On the other hand, he can barely remember a time before Roy. Not literally, but...Ed's whole life seems colored by Roy, retroactively. Roy in Granny's kitchen, young but still older than Ed is now, dangling the State Alchemy libraries in Central like a carrot on a stick. Roy passing over the certificate, calling him Fullmetal for the first time. Roy on the other end of the telephone line, giving orders, making complaints, demanding reports. Roy lying, straightfaced, after Hughes...  
  
It's Roy, it's always Roy, watching him and dogging his steps and letting him get away with mayhem if not murder, and no matter what happens, those things will always be true. Ed will always owe Roy those 520 cenz, he'll keep thinking of reasons not to pay the money back.  
  
It's been sixteen months, but really it's been eight years, and Ed tries to hold onto that as they talk, as they Talk with capitalization because they are both Adults now, and Roy has that quiet tone in his voice, the one that means he's hurting, and Ed doesn't know how to fix it. Doesn't know if he's _supposed_ to fix it.  
  
"I want you to be happy," Roy says, and Ed knows it's a truth, but not the entire truth.  
  
"Good, 'cause I want _you_ to be happy, so hey, we're even."  
  
Roy smiles a little, and his eyes tighten. If he were older, there would be crow's feet at the corners. Will Ed get to see that? Wrinkles, a bit of distinguished gray in his dark hair? Could they stand each other long enough to grow old together? Do they want to?  
  
"You're still young, Ed--"  
  
"I'm legal. And you're not exactly ancient, Roy. Thirty-three is the new twenty."  
  
"I'm just saying, what if--"  
  
"Roy," Ed says, because he doesn't want to let him finish, doesn't want to hear the latest of dozens of 'what-ifs,' "what's the worst that could happen? I mean, really, the actual worst thing you can imagine?"  
  
Roy stares at him for a long moment, stock still. Ed considers. Rephrases. His voice comes out softer than he meant.  
  
"What's the worst way I could hurt you?"  
  
Roy's reply is immediate, and resigned.  
  
"You could wake up one day, five years from now, twenty-five years from now, and realize I'd stolen your whole life. You'd never had anyone else, and you never would, unless you left me."  
  
Ed tries, and finds he can't even _imagine_ twenty-five years in the future. More than half his life away from now, and Roy has already foreseen their doom.  
  
"What if I never want anyone else?" Ed replies automatically, because he has to be contrary, he can't let all this wild extrapolation go unchallenged. It comes out before he thinks about it. It's the wrong question.  
  
Roy closes his eyes briefly as if in pain; when he opens them again, the answer is written there. Last night, and this morning. The accusations, and nevermind that they weren't true, that Ed fell asleep unintentionally in a chair in Winry's room. Roy gave in to jealousy, Roy didn't trust him, and Ed lashed out to cover up that little niggling sense of guilt.  
  
What if he _did_ want someone else?  
  
"I love you," Ed says quietly, and he means it.  
  
"I know," Roy replies. That Roy loves Ed back has never been in doubt.  
  
"I think...." Ed lowers his face into his hands. "I think I love her too."  
  
"I know," comes the quiet reply.


	21. 21 - August 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“…the midsummer night light rising form beneath  
the horizon—when I said “a cleft of light”  
I meant this. And this is not Stonehenge  
simply nor any place but the mind  
casting back to where her solitude,  
shared, could be chosen without loneliness,  
not easily nor without pains to stake out  
the circle, the heavy shadows, the great light.  
I choose to be a figure in that light,  
half-blotted by darkness…”_  
  
  
"I don't know what I'm doing," Ed says, collapsing down onto the bed like a puppet with its strings cut.  
  
Al takes the suitcase from his hands, lays it open between them and begins re-folding the haphazard piles of clothing inside. "Why didn't you tell me any of this on the phone?"  
  
Ed shrugs, letting himself be lulled for the moment by the regular motions of Al's efforts: shake out, fold left, fold right, in half, tuck into suitcase. Shake out, fold left, fold right...  
  
"I guess I just...didn't know how to explain it. Still don't."  
  
"You fell asleep in Winry's hotel room. Roy accused you of cheating. You didn't, but you felt like you had, because you've loved her since we were kids."  
  
"I love Roy. I love Roy too."  
  
"I know," Al murmurs, laying the last shirt into the case. "But nobody's perfect, Brother. Roy's got jealousy and self-worth issues, and you've got _guilt_ and self worth issues, and..." Al sighs, and when Ed looks up at his face, really looks, Al seems...tired, and sad. "You could be so, so good for each other. You've _been_ good for each other. If you could both just..."  
  
Ed turns away, opens the drawer of his nightstand. Pulls out a smooth bit of wood. "Driftwood. Picked it up on a beach in Aquaroya, when we were on vacation there. Roy said we were both a little like driftwood, worked over and worn into our shapes. I said no way we could be driftwood, neither of us will let the tide just carry us along. Always gotta fight the tide."  
  
"What did he think of that?"  
  
"He said that maybe we were both crabs, instead. Just being an ass, you know. Spoiling the metaphor. That was a good trip." Ed places the bit of driftwood gently on top of the clothes and clicks the suitcase shut. "I packed up some notes and books and stuff already."  
  
"Good, because we've got to leave for the station in a minute."  
  
Al hefts the case (he's getting stronger every day, back to fighting shape, and so _tall_ ) and clumps down the stairs. Ed can hear the door open and close--Ross offered to drive them to pick up Winry and take them to the station, she must be out there with the car already--and then the sound repeats as Al brings out his own bag, and their slimmer case stuffed with joint research notes.  
  
Then Al murmurs something; Roy's low baritone follows, but Ed can't make out the words from here. The door opens one more time, closing behind Al. There are heavy footsteps on the stairs.  
The bed dips a bit when Roy sits on it, and Ed lets gravity pull him toward the lower side, his back against Roy's. He can feel Roy's breath, steady, slow, and tries to match his own to it.  
  
"Call me when you get there," Roy says, like always, and his voice vibrates right into Ed's chest.  
  
"I will. Don't...don't do anything stupid," Ed says, like always, except he always says _while I'm away,_ because he's always been coming back. The room is echoing with it, with Ed not saying it. He gets up instead, walks around the bed, kisses Roy just like always, deliberate and closed-mouthed. Ed turns away, walks out of the room and down the stairs, through the den, out the door, and gets into the car.


	22. Floating, Unnumbered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is by the incredible bob_fish! You can see her illustrations [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/80055.html)!

_“Whatever happens with us, your body_  
 _will haunt mine—tender, delicate_  
 _your lovemaking, like the half-curled frond_  
 _of the fiddlehead fern in forests_  
 _just washed by sun. Your traveled, generous thighs_  
 _between which my whole face has come and come—_  
 _the innocence and wisdom of the place my tongue has found there—_  
 _the live, insatiate dance of your nipples in my mouth—_  
 _your touch on me, firm, protective, searching_  
 _me out, your strong tongue and slender fingers_  
 _reaching where I had been waiting for years for you_  
 _in my rose-wet cave—whatever happens, this is.”_  
  
  
It's still a mystery, how Ed was convinced. He was never quite comfortable with Roy's brand of slow, quiet, intense sensuality. The kind that made him stare at Ed, naked and flushed, not even touching him, just stroking that golden skin with his gaze alone. So why? Was it some niggling sense of guilt? Did he already know, in that balmy midnight hour last August, that he was going to break Roy's heart? Did he know this most private intersection of their bodies would end, and wanted something left to remember it by?  
  
Roy left off licking the skin where Ed's hip and thigh joined, brought out the camera and looked the question at him. Set it for continuous timed exposures, angled it just right on the bedside table. Ed watched its wide blank eye, and Roy waited. Roy waited, and Ed shuddered, and his cock dripped a wet spot on the sheet. Roy waited until Ed rolled onto him, answered him with blown pupils ringed in gold and a low, wordless moan. The shutter clicked. Ed arched for it, and Roy ran his hands along the sinuous line of Ed's back, scarred palms aching to touch him even while they already were.  
  
Later, they set up a dark room in Roy's guest bath, developing the film in the weird glow of red lights. Only a few of them turned out, between the murky dark of the bedroom and the unchanging angle of the camera versus the ever-changing angles of their pleasure. A thigh here, a hand there, a slight gleam of metal in a black shot. But that first click--Roy transfixed and reaching for Ed, bent like a bow with his hair streaming down his back and lips just barely parted--blossomed slowly to life in the chemical developer and made Roy's breath congeal in his chest for love of that man.  
  
"Let's cut it in half," Ed murmured. "You take the me half, I'll take the you half. For when." He paused. Roy lives entire days of misery lost in that remembered pause. "For when we're not together."  
  
Looking at his half now makes Roy's breath congeal for other reasons entirely. But he keeps it tucked away in a dark pocket of his wallet.  
  
***  
  
Ed worries that Winry will find the photo some day, even tucked as it is into the back of his alchemy journal. His current one, which is the same one he drew circles and wrote formulas in to test Roy's clapping. She hasn't the slightest interest in the technical side of it, especially now that he can't use it anymore.  
  
He worries, but he keeps it. Roy, reaching through the dark, enthralled. In love. Unknowing, trusting.  
  
Ed's used to chronic pain. This is just one more that he will carry, until the end of his days.


End file.
